Data Scientist / AI Scientist

The Buck names Lisa Seitz Gruwell as Chief Advancement Officer. The Buck Institute for Research on Aging today announced the appointment of Lisa Seitz Gruwell as its Chief Advancement Officer. In this role, Seitz Gruwell will lead all aspects of the Buck's advancement efforts - philanthropy, communications, and marketing - and serve as a key member of the Institute's executive leadership team. "We are thrilled to welcome Lisa to the Buck," said Eric Verdin, MD, President and CEO. "Lisa has proven and deep expertise in philanthropy, communications, and community building for mission-driven organizations. We are confident that, in partnership with our board and executive team, she will play a leading role in helping us achieve our critical fundraising goals." Seitz Gruwell joins the Buck after 15 years at Wikipedia, where she was Chief Advancement Officer and Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the Wikipedia Foundation and President of the Wikimedia Endowment. During Seitz Gruwell's time at Wikipedia, she increased philanthropic giving from approximately $30M to $230M per year and founded the Wikimedia Endowment, a separate charity that grew to over $200M under her leadership. She also led the community growth teams that recruited, trained, and supported the global community of over 280,000 active volunteers who create Wikipedia. "The Buck Institute's researchers are making accelerated progress on our understanding of aging and age-related disease, and their work is already significantly improving human health," Seitz Gruwell said. "There is a tremendous opportunity to tell the story of the Buck to the world and engage people in supporting our efforts to help people live better longer." Prior to joining Wikipedia, Seitz Gruwell was Chief Operating Officer for Skyline Public Works and the Rappaport Family Foundation, which blended venture capital with philanthropy to support and incubate social good organizations. Earlier in her career, she held various roles in public relations, political consulting, and public policy. Science is showing that while chronological aging is inevitable, biological aging is malleable. There's a part of it that you can fight, and Buck Institute is getting closer and closer to winning that fight. Eric Verdin, MD, Buck Institute President and CEO

The Buck Institute for Research on Aging and Fennec Engineering partner to build the safety infrastructure for Biological AI. Fennec Engineering Jul 08, 2026, 11:00 ET Fennec and the Buck Institute partner to unite longevity science, functional safety, and autonomous systems engineering to make AI-driven biological research trustworthy at scale. COLUMBUS, Ohio, July 8, 2026 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ - The Buck Institute for Research on Aging and Fennec Engineering today announced a partnership to explore and support the specialized safety infrastructure required for developing biological AI systems responsibly. The partnership brings together more than 25 years of Buck's scientific research expertise and Fennec's proven functional safety frameworks to solve a defining engineering challenge: ensuring that generative AI operating within complex biological systems does so reliably, predictably, and with full accountability. Meeting the Moment in Biological AI As AI takes on a greater role in biological research, it introduces new safety challenges: black box AI models can produce novel biological structures with no historical analog, making traditional checklist-based risk assessment and validation insufficient. Buck and Fennec are addressing this through an integrated framework that hardwires automated safety guardrails directly into AI-driven biological simulations, anchored in the fundamental cause-and-effect mechanisms of biology itself. The result is a system capable of predicting and neutralizing emergent risks before they leave a digital simulation environment, or what the partners call proactive trust. Buck Faculty member James Yurkovich, PhD leads the Laboratory for Applied Systems BioAI and is spearheading this partnership. "As we continue to utilize more and more AI in our research into biological simulation, building out the necessary safety guardrails is crucial," said Dr. Yurkovich. "This partnership empowers us to move at the speed required for this burgeoning field with the confidence that safety is the number one priority." "The functional safety principles that govern autonomous systems and humanoid robotics apply directly here," said Justin Croyle, Chief Product Officer at Fennec Engineering. "When AI operates in uncharted territory, safety has to be built from first principles rather than inherited from a traditional checklist. That's what this partnership is addressing." Two Organizations, One Shared Mission The Buck Institute is the only independent U.S. research institution solely focused on the connection between aging and chronic disease, with a mission to extend human healthspan. Fennec Engineering brings deep expertise in functional safety and systems validation, with roots in Amazon Robotics and a track record that includes enabling the certification of more than one million robotic systems worldwide. Together, they are building the safety supply chain that allows biological AI to fulfill its potential in precision medicine and longevity research. About the Buck Institute: Its success will ultimately change healthcare. At the Buck, OncoZine aim to end the threat of age-related diseases for this and future generations by bringing together the most capable and passionate scientists from a broad range of disciplines to identify and impede the ways in which OncoZine age. An independent, nonprofit institution, its goal is to increase human healthspan, or the healthy years of life. Globally recognized as the pioneer and leader in efforts to target aging, the number one risk factor for serious diseases including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, cancer, macular degeneration, heart disease, and diabetes, the Buck wants to help people live better longer. Learn more at: https://buckinstitute.org About Fennec Engineering: Fennec Engineering builds the safety infrastructure for autonomous systems, robotics, and AI, delivering an end-to-end platform, from concept through certification. OncoZine unify safety across the supply chain, eliminating regulatory guesswork, and helping teams bring certified innovations to market faster. Fennec ensures that safety moves at the speed of innovation. Learn more at https://fennec-engineering.com/ and https://www.linkedin.com/company/fennec-engineering/ Media Contact